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Maya's statue splurge runs foul of Supreme Court
WSN Network

LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: India's top Dalit leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati created history of sorts this month by unveiling a number of her own statues and that of party's deceased mentor Kanshi Ram, but seems to have foul of the Supreme Court which has asked for an explanation. Mayawati's and her apologists' claim is that statues were meant to instill confidence in the much discriminated against section of the society and that upper caste Brahamanical leaders' statues anyway far outnumber any efforts by the Dalits to have similar icons.

A vacation bench of Supreme Court headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari has now asked the Mayawati government to respond within four weeks to charges that massive amounts of public fund were wasted in building and installing the statues. A public interest litigation (PIL) filed in the court claimed that 90 per cent of the budget of the state’s culture department was used up for building statues.

Hundreds of crores of rupees from the state budgets for 2008 and 2009 were wasted in glorifying Mayawati, Supreme Court advocate Ravi Kant said in the PIL. The court was requested to lay down guidelines for installation of statues of national leaders by govern ments at public places. Mayawati's close aide and senior advocate S.C. Mishra has countered this by saying places like Teen Murti Bhavan also were examples of wastage of money. He said the land itself was worth over Rs 5,000 crore.

Earlier appearing on behalf of the state government, senior advocate U.U. Lalit denied that unveiling of 15 statues by Mayawati on June 25 was an attempt to pre-empt the court from ordering a stay.

1 July 2009
 

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